Technoso’s Kunio-kun titles, a 42-part series dabbling in various genres, began in 1986 as a simple arena brawler. However, his most popular entries were those that included non-linear role-playing elements based on high school soap operas. Anyone familiar with these titles, specifically on the Famicom, Super Famicom and later the Nintendo 3DS, will completely understand how Fading Afternoon works.
Hailing from Moscow, developer Yeo (real name Vadim Gilyazetdinov) coded several titles of a similar vein, collectively known as his Existential Dilogy. Earlier titles, Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (2018) and Arrest of the Stone Buddha (2020) also borrowed from the Kunio-kun format. While notable for his experimentation and ambition, everything Yeo has been searching for perfection seems to have come true in his latest title, Fading Afternoon. Everything from concept to execution is underpinned by a thoughtful, reflective narrative and executed with confidence and bravura.
You play as Seiji Murayama, freshly released from prison, a Yakuza thug with a shrouded past and a bleak future. Set in Osaka, you’ll soon meet up with old acquaintances and rekindle your bonds as you freely explore a map filled with picturesque, distinctive streets and unique interactive locations. Initially, your gang will put you up in a hotel from where you can move around Osaka during the day, with the subway acting as a transit point to available locations. You will quickly learn to explore, walk the streets, enter shops, offices and other interesting places and meet friends and enemies who occupy different positions and present different opportunities. One of the key indicators of the map is “war”, which basically means that a rival gang will be present in the red highlighted area. If you choose to engage in combat by throwing the first punch, you will quickly be surrounded by thugs. When in your own territory or won, Murayama often benefits from having a sidekick; but if he is on the opponent’s turf, he must fend off his attackers himself.
Since combat is a necessary part of progression, it’s thankfully well-implemented, manageable, and satisfying at the same time. It’s impressive how vast your repertoire is and how cleverly it works with just two buttons. You can punch, kick, combo, throw, parry opponents and basically disarm them to use their weapons against them. It’s a good idea to slap the punk and knock him to the floor before whipping the gun out of the hood’s hand and then turning it on.
It is very mature, tonally, not only in its themes of illness, loss, painful memories and the loneliness of gang culture, but also in its visual violence. The fight is bloody, with broken bones, bullets to the head and knives to the guts, leading to an appropriate shower of crimson. The animation is great and bursts with character, whether the sprites are smoking, sitting or slinging a bag over their shoulder.
What sets Fading Afternoon apart is the life simulator angle and attention to detail. In order to survive, you really have to deal with taking care of Murayama-san. If you don’t extend your stay at the hotel by paying for extra days, you will suddenly wake up on a public bench, where at one point we realized that we had lost an important asset without ever understanding its purpose.
Without the comfort of a bathroom to shave in, Murayama ends up growing a bushy beard as the game moves through impressive real-time day and night cycles. Wherever you are, from morning to afternoon, from sunset to dusk, the color palette shifts accordingly and changes the appearance of places.
Money is essential to progress, and there are countless, mostly criminal, ways to get it. If you fall in battle, you’ll wake up in the hospital with a hefty bill to pay. You can choose to approach the game as a poor, homeless brute, or work your way up to riches, sitting in cafes and refilling your HP with coffee. Increasing your wallet through Brawl opens up the game world. With the money, you can buy new clothes, have fun in hostess bars, or have fun at the baseball range. Murayama is a smoker, he can light and extinguish a cigarette with real skill, he squats wherever he wants to move in life. Vending machines and other equipment are available to supplement the reward for cigarettes.
At the same time, Murujama-san’s existence is sad, and the way his story is revealed, often in dream sequences, is absorbing. With its non-linear narrative, all your decisions, successes and failures change the path you take and your final outcome, meaning it can be experienced in many different ways.
Fading Afternoon can best be described as a 2D Yakuza game in Kunio-kun form. Yeo makes his pixelated Osaka live and breathe so convincingly that it’s a truly soothing experience to immerse yourself in. The backgrounds are beautiful – easily matching some of the Super Nintendo’s best – and everything feels very authentic to what Japan really is – like you’re taking a holiday, of sorts. It’s done with subtlety, realism and richness, making every door or staircase impressive, your exploration opening up mini-games, distinct storylines and random character encounters.
Our only real criticism is that you’re initially thrown in at the deep end in terms of plot. The storytelling is never over-the-top or overwritten, but there are plenty of titbits that you can’t remember at first, and it takes a cinematic approach to flesh out its story and complex web of relationships. It can be confusing at first if you were to try to create a mental directory of who’s who. Fortunately, as you become more familiar with the streets of Osaka and revisit key NPCs, the plot elements come into focus and you become more satisfied with where it’s all going.
Conclusion
Fading Afternoon is a very ambitious game that improves on Technos’ decades-old Kunio-kun formula in almost every way. It is certainly the most perfect of Yeo’s works and impressive in its brilliance. But what really shines is the way it expands on its life simulator elements and all the important details. It keeps things fresh, interesting and compelling. Although regularly peppered with satisfying gangster violence, it’s by no means a fast-paced game. With its tight storyline and melancholic themes, it’s more of an experience to immerse yourself in, explore and enjoy all its little surprises and divergent paths in subsequent games. In everything it tries to achieve, Fading Afternoon is incredibly charming.